


Sweet Dee Gets Rabies

by malibunny



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Charlie mixes a potion, Dee deals with her Issues, F/F, post season 12
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 05:49:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14664591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malibunny/pseuds/malibunny
Summary: Set after the events of the Season 12 finale. Dee finally has some breathing room to deal with her own issues without Dennis around all the time to screw things up, and then she goes out and gets bit by some animal. Typical.





	Sweet Dee Gets Rabies

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter titles from Shutterbug by Veruca Salt. I stand by my decision to write this in present tense.

Dee's head pounds. She's sitting at a bus stop. She's not sure where she is, or what bus she needs to take to get home. She'd lost her fucking stupid shitty phone, and no way was she going to make herself look like an asshole asking someone where she was. She was From here. Obviously she knew her way around. She glances up to look for a landmark and immediately regrets it, sun searing into her eyes.

Dee spaces out. Suddenly she's in front of a mall she recognizes. Suddenly she's ordering food somewhere. The cashier gives her a funny look, Dee doesn't know if it's disgust or concern, but she doesn't tip either way. The mall doesn't look that much like it did when she and Dennis were in high school. After she's done eating, she wanders around, passing the Gap that used to be the store she got caught shoplifting at stealing earrings because Stupid Dennis had wanted them.

She still hadn't called him.

It's his fault she hadn't called him. Dumping the fact that she's now an aunt on her with no warning was above and beyond all his little schemes, and she wasn't forgiving him any time soon. In fact, she had resolved not to think about him whatsoever until he came back begging for her forgiveness. Ah, shit. Dee stirs her smoothie until it's the consistency of gritty juice, and counts to twenty in her head until her head is completely empty again.

* * *

Dee's house is a wreck, but at least Mac isn't in it. She slings her purse down onto the floor and kicks her shoes off next to it. Somehow it was already almost seven PM and Dee has only just noticed that her arm really fucking hurts. Her sleeve is sticking to her skin, and it's stained brown. Gross. At the kitchen sink Dee pulls her shirt off and hisses as it peels away from her forearm. Her first thought is "at least that wasn't shit". Her second thought is "What the fuck is that?".

Under her sleeve is a curved line of teeth marks crusted with dried blood and bits of fuzz from her shirt. It had to be from some kind of animal, as if something had bit the outside of her arm. It looks red and irritated, although it isn't bleeding now, it's bruised purple and red and green. She hopes it's not a raccoon bite, this wouldn't be the first time, but the jaw size seems too big. She realizes it hurts more than she had previously noticed. It's gross, and made her a little bit nauseated to look at. She turns on the sink as hot as it'll go, and shoves her arm under the stream, holding it there until it feels scalded. When she pulls it back, the skin is pink and soft and some of the blood has loosened and washed down the drain in flaky chunks.

Rubbing some hand sanitizer into the wound, Dee bandages her arm with paper towels and rubber bands, and gets a six pack from the fridge. She drinks it in front of the TV, cursing every so often when she reaches for her phone beside her only to remember she'd lost it. That was cause enough to not go to work that night. She was late as it was. What were Charlie and Mac gonna do? Call her?

She hadn't been showing up for work much anyway, she doubts they were expecting her. She had never been consistent, but ever since five months ago now, she only came into work if she truly felt like it, or to steal money from the register. It had been humiliating to have to beg Frank to pay her rent again, but after the second month she hadn't cared enough about dignity to stop herself from sending the text she had had saved in her phone's notes since the day she'd kicked mac out four months and three weeks ago.

* * *

Dee wakes up from a dream involving wild animals remembering that rabies exists. She stumbles to her feet, searching for her phone in the dark for ten minutes before she remembers. Instead she finds her laptop, and blinks in the darkness at the bright screen, and Googles symptoms of rabies. They're all sort of terrifying so she turns it off again and drinks a big glass of water.

It takes another hour at least, and a room temperature beer to get her to fall asleep again. When she wakes up, she feels surprisingly good. Energetic, even. She decides she'll go to work today, if for no other reason than to scope out if anything interesting was going on (and to steal from the register).

The day seems to last forever, she doesn't want to go in until at least after dinner time, so she doesn't, but without her phone, and with some growing anxiety about the nature of her bite, she feels restless. Her mood feels like it flips twenty times between waking up and when she's finally ready to go. It goes from angry, to anxious, to numb, to angry again, and so on, and it's frankly exhausting. She grabs her keys and purse and fixes herself with a look in the mirror before she goes.

"We're gonna kill it, bitch."

* * *

"Ah, Dee, you're here!" Charlie said, sounding genuinely excited about it, probably because there's nobody else to be seen in Paddy's.

Dee replies with a noncommittal "ayo", and throws her purse down on one of the small tables. It takes all of three seconds for Charlie to start snooping into her business.

"Hey, Dee, your arm's bleeding," typical Charlie.

"Yeah, I know," Dee says, glaring at him, "some goddamn animal bit me a couple days ago, I think it was one of Artemis's cats," Dee looks down to find that yes, her sleeve is already stained dark brown with two dime-sized patches of blood again. Fantastic.

"Cat bites?" Charlie says, in his usual screeching fashion, "y'know, Dee, I have something for that. It's this mixture of, like, paint thinner, and dog shampoo, and a daub of rubber cement. I'm pretty sure that when you mix that stuff together it gains, like, magical healing properties. I've been using it for years when I get bit by rats, or cats, or raccoons, y'know?"

"Uh, I don't know about that," Dee says, trying to remember if she's ever heard of paint thinner being used as an antiseptic in college. "But, I mean... Aw, screw it, I guess we could give it a try. You haven't ever had rabies, have you, Charlie? I'm a little worried about the rabies factor."

Charlie scratches his arm thoughtfully, "I'm pretty sure I'm immune. I've gotten cat scratch fever so many times at this point I'm pretty sure I just stopped getting it, and that's pretty much the same thing."

Dee takes his word for it, and follows him to the basement, where he mixes up a batch, and they stand in the fumes, getting progressively more light headed. Dee pulls her sleeve up, hissing as the dried blood pulling at her skin. Underneath the cut looks almost as bad, if not worse than it had when she'd first noticed it. Now it's all scabbed up again, but it was red all around and the skin was itchy and inflamed.

"Woah, Dee! I don't think that's a cat bite," Charlie says loudly, eyes wide as he leans in closer to inspect, "No, I'd say that's more like a dog. Hey, do you think you could be turning into a werewolf?"

"I'm not turning into a werewolf, Charlie. Just put your stupid magical elixir on me and lets get out of here, I think these fumes are giving us brain damage."

Back upstairs, Dee breathes the fresh air, and gets herself a beer, but before she can really relax, Charlie looks at her like he was remembering something.

"Y'know what, Dee? Artemis called me, she says she's got your phone," Charlie says, giving Dee a hard to place look. Dee glares back at him, daring him to say whatever he was thinking.

"Goddamn, I was looking for my phone all yesterday! You should have told me sooner! How'd You find out?"

"Well, she got my number from Dennis whe-"

"-Oh, ok, uh huh, I get it. Did she tell you when I can go get it? I might just go now, this place is dead as shit." Dee cuts him off.

"Oh. Uh. So are we...? We're still not talking about, uh, he who-"

"-No, Charlie, we're not. I'll be back later. Tell Mac to get over here while I'm gone."

Dee turns around sharply and leaves, jumping back into her car. She pauses, and then screams a few times as loud as she can as she pulls away, gritting her teeth so hard she hopes they get crushed into little bloody specks of dust. it takes less time than it ought to have to get to Artemis' apartment, but more time than Dee wanted. She finds herself suddenly in front of Artemis' door, Artemis opening it as if Dee had knocked.

"Oh, hey, Dee, you remembered our appointment!," Artemis says. She's wearing some kind of beaded shawl.

"You were preetty wasted, I thought you were gonna forget for sure."

Dee is beckoned in, and she makes a face of confusion and annoyance. "What appointment? Charlie told me you had my phone."

One of Artemis' cats waddles up to Dee as the door closes as if it's going to rub its little body against her leg, but instead it stops dead, hisses, and turns around, scampering into a back room somewhere. Dee doesn't set her bag down and ignores the cats. Whatever.

Artemis gives Dee a weird look, she almost looks like she's laughing at Dee, and it makes Dee mad. Artemispicks up Dee's phone from her kitchen counter, and hands it over, but stops Dee before she can leave.

"I was supposed to read your palm. You promised, Dee, and I want to practice on real people."

Dee finds it hard to believe that she is the only person Artemis could find who would let her read their palm. Still, something tugs at Dee that might have been touch starvation, and she agrees with a roll over eyes, making Artemis promise it wouldn't take very long.

Artemis lights incense, and puts on some kind of... music, Dee guesses. Then Artemis brings dee to her couch, and they sit side by side. Artemis smells like weed, or maybe it's just a different kind of incense. She holds Dee's hand, and brings it to her lap, and then she pauses.

"Dee. What the hell happened to your arm?" Artemis says, making a face of mild concern and more than mild interest as she eyes the bloodied, and now ointment-greased sleeve of Dee's shirt.

Suddenly defensive, Dee snatches her arm back, "Oh, so one of your cats didn't do this to me the other night?" She knew Charlie had said it was probably a dog, but she couldn't contain the sudden outburst.

"Do my cats have mouths that big?" Artemis asks, gently rolling up Dee's sleeve to see the greasy mess of a bite.

The fire dies in Dee's throat and she shrugs, feeling suddenly very out of place. she doesn't know what she's doing here, or why she agreed to let Artemis read her palm of all things. She offers up a weak explanation of Charlie's magical elixir rabies cure, and Artemis laughs, and then stifles it.

"That's not gonna cure your rabies, Dee. I know just what you need."

Dee is alone again on the couch, and then Artemis reappears with a rug rolled up, which she unrolls on the coffee table after pushing off a stack of Cosmo magazines.

"Crystals?" It was all Dee could manage, feeling rage and indigence bubble up like hot tar again in her belly.

"Oh yes, Dee. You know I was sleeping with this yogi about a year ago, she got me into this. She cured my vertigo with these," Artemis gestures to a plastic bag separate from the rest with a few smooth, circular crystals in them, "those are my vaginal crystals. I think we'll start you off with some topical crystals. Unless... Do you-?"

"No!" Dee shrieks, feeling even more like she's in some kind of bad joke of a dream, "I'll try Charlie's elixir, but I draw the fucking line at snatch crystals."

"Ok, ok, calm down! It was just a suggestion."


End file.
